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Electronic Voting

Electronic Voting. Ronald L. Rivest MIT Laboratory for Computer Science. Edison’s 1869 Voting Machine. Intended for use in Congress; never adopted because it was “too fast” !. The famous “butterfly ballot”. A “dimpled chad” ???. Voting Technology Study.

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Electronic Voting

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  1. Electronic Voting Ronald L. Rivest MIT Laboratory for Computer Science

  2. Edison’s 1869 Voting Machine Intended for use in Congress; never adopted because it was “too fast” !

  3. The famous “butterfly ballot”

  4. A “dimpled chad” ???

  5. Voting Technology Study • MIT and CalTech have begun a joint study of alternative voting technologies. • Companion to Carter/Ford commission on political issues in voting systems. • Initial work funded by the Carnegie Foundation. • Electronic voting schemes will be included in study.

  6. Electronic Voting • Could the U.S. presidential elections be held on the Internet? • Why bother? • Increased voter convenience? • Increased voter turnout? • Increased confidence in result? • “Because we can”? ?

  7. The “Secure Platform Problem” In theory: Voting System SKA Alice In fact: Voting System SKA Alice

  8. Where’s the financial angle? • Buying and selling votes!! • Casting a vote is a bit like depositing an electronic coin…? • Getting absentee ballot like getting disposable credit card number…? • Congress and states may allocate mucho $$ to upgrade voting equipment… (costs are $5K per precinct just to lease). • Anonymous political contributions…

  9. Some personal opinions • More important that no one has their thumb on the scale than having scale easy to use or very accurate. • Can I convince my mom that system is trustworthy? • Physical ballots (e.g. paper) can provide better audit trails than electronic systems.

  10. More personal opinions: • Precinct-based decisions on voting technology has benefits: lack of uniformity allows for experimentation and makes large-scale fraud harder. • Ability to handle disabled voters will become increasingly important. • Biggest security problem has got to be the problem of absentee ballots.

  11. Anguilla Grand Cayman My favorite technology (today) • Fill-in bubbles on paper ballots. Optically scan ballots at polling site, before ballot is deposited.

  12. (THE END)

  13. Financial Crypto ‘02 Anguilla Grand Cayman

  14. Security Requirements • All eligible voters should be able to vote. • Therefore: can at best augment current system, not replace it. • May need to close electronic voting early. • Votes should be private (anonymous). • May be difficult to ensure at home. • Voters should not be able to sell their votes! • Voting should be private and “receipt-free” • Integrity and verifiability of result; no vulnerability to large-scale fraud.

  15. The “Alice abstraction” • Assumes Alice can create and keep secret her secret key SKA, while still being able use it. • There is a fundamental conflict between • secrecy of a secret key, and • the usability of that secret key

  16. Where does Alice keep SKA? • An important question!SKA is Alice’s “cyber-soul”; theft of SKA is “identity theft”. • Modern OS’s (Windows, Unix) are too complex to be adequately secure(viruses, Trojan horses). • But: we need modern OS to support applications and satisfactory UI.Conflict!

  17. Can Alice use a smart card? • A smart card storing SKAis vulnerable to power-analysis, timing, and chosen-message attacks. • Worse, there is no UI on a smart card: it must trust the device into which it is inserted to compose message to be signed.

  18. Needed: a secure platform • One that Alice can trust to: • Store her secret key SKA securely • Use her secret key to sign messages, without revealing any information about SKA • Reliably show her what she is about to sign (trusted user interface) • Not be vulnerable to Trojan horses and viruses.

  19. Perhaps a smart phone? • Promising, but starting to look too much like a desktop PC in terms of complexity and consequent vulnerability… • Maybe with a special SIM card just for voting…? • Problems would remain: vote-selling (allow voting multiple times, where last one counts!)

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